


The Unmourned

by Rotpeach



Category: Boyfriend to Death (Visual Novels)
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Dubious Consent, F/M, Feral Behavior, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Multi, Obsession, Polyamory, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-27 04:48:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17760068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rotpeach/pseuds/Rotpeach
Summary: Ren Hana goes to Japan and learns to let go.





	1. 序

**Author's Note:**

> so a while ago i had planned on doing an edo-period folklore au fic about ren but it never materialized for various reasons. this is not that fic, but it does share some of the things i wanted to accomplish. it's a little personal lol but i think it's something nice for the season.
> 
> this is set a bit before the second game.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I may live on until  
> I long for this time  
> In which I am so unhappy  
> And remember it fondly  
> -Fujiawara no Kiyosuke

You wouldn’t like what Ren does with the money.

_Your_ money. Your small, secret fortune like a scavenger’s leftovers, all fermenting blood and bones just lying inert somewhere. You would laugh, wouldn’t you? Call the whole thing a waste. He can hear your mocking, your laughter, in every breath. In his pulse. In the choked rattle of a suitcase, your suitcase, dragging through the winter slush, in the stormy rumble of a jet engine. At three in the morning on an overnight flight to Narita, he was staring out the window blearily, and he was too tired to sleep, if that makes sense, too tired to let himself. Three in the morning, thousands of feet in the air, and he was hearing you still, endlessly, like white noise in his head. And he isn’t sure if this is new or not. If you’ve always been there, or if you wormed your way in. Left your body like shed skin, and curled up in his.

That’s not the point. The point is, you wouldn’t like it.

“I just said fuck it, I’m going to Tokyo!” laughs his roommate.

Yeah, he’s replaced you. He’s got a new roommate. He’s got twelve, actually, just for the next week and a half. They stay in the same honeycombed hall of the hostel in cubes lined with bedding. They’re backpackers and college kids and travel bloggers, he knows, because they told him. People talk so easily out here, in the world. He’s not great at it yet, but he’s trying, and they’re all nice enough to ignore it when he stutters, which he doesn’t do all that much anymore.

“I just wanted to do something totally out there,” says Noah, the guy who sleeps in unit 303 right over Ren’s. “Go somewhere way out of my comfort zone, y’know? And this is the place. I ate something with a tentacle in it the other day, absolutely loved it. Sent a picture to my sister and she said it’s gonna crawl back up my throat while I’m sleeping.”

Noah is young, friendly, and painfully American the way he marvels openly at the bidet toilets and reads from his _Japanese On The Go_ phrasebook late at night, loudly and badly. And he’s nice, really, actually nice the way Ren forgot strangers could be. He buys snacks on his way back to the hostel to share with everybody. There’s always extra for Ren, a packet of snack crackers pressed into his palm when nobody’s looking, and every time their fingers brush Ren is thinking about holding on and squeezing until something breaks.

He doesn’t, of course. But the thought is always there, lurking in those same dark corners where you’ve taken up residence in his head. And that’s your fault. You’re the reason he looks at Noah and knows he’d be the type who can’t take any pain. You’re the reason he can picture it so clearly; teasing cuts in the thin, webbed flesh between Noah’s fingers, like notches in paper that bleeds. Ren can _feel_ the way Noah’s wrist would shake and the muscles in his shoulders would all strain in unison, fighting in vain. Bruises and rope burn. Little nicks in the skin with just the very tip of the knife. Steel love bites.

This is how Ren sees everyone now. The face first, the smile, the eyes, and then it’s there, flashing in front of him like lightning. Like you’re in his head, flipping switches. If the mailman stops and waves, Ren sees how he’d look in the basement, a pair of scissors sticking out of his throat and his muscles fluttering around it like a skewered fish, stuck, scrambling. He turns to look at Noah sitting across from him in the hostel lobby and sees him in your basement instead, bound, bleeding, his eyes wide and filled with tears. It doesn’t scare him like it used to, but he doesn’t like it. Not here. Not now. He meant to leave you behind.

“I felt a little like that, too,” Ren says. “Like doing something different, I mean.”

“Right on. How long’re you here?”

“Until Monday.”

“Same as me, sweet!” Noah grins. It’s contagious, and Ren’s clumsy when he tries to meet him halfway on the high-five, his thumb bouncing off Noah’s palm sideways, but they both laugh anyway, and you would hate this. Ren hears you in the slosh of the janitor’s mop cleaning up a tea spill under the next table, even when he tries not to. He hears you seething.

Noah reaches into the mouth of crinkling plastic wrapping between them for another piece of candy. Ren’s got a forearm on the table and he’s looking out the big front windows at Tokyo, but he’s also watching the young man across from him in a quiet, subtle way, eyes flicking back and forth from concrete scenery to his roommate. Noah’s on the short side, barely taller than Ren, dirty blond with a spatter of freckles across his cheeks. He’s every peppy best friend in every anime where the protagonist is a wallflower who needs someone to drag him out of his shell, and Ren likes that. Likes him. Thinks this could go somewhere.  Doesn’t want to fuck this up.

Noah licks the powdered sugar off of his fingers and Ren sees, in a flash, himself pinching the pink tip, pulling it taught from Noah’s lips and pressing an ice pick through the meaty center. He hears the squelch, feels the tearing, smells blood in his nostrils and the sharp stench of Noah’s panicked sweat. He swallows hard. The air conditioning in the hostel lobby is at full blast and it doesn’t make a goddamn bit of difference.

“Hey, sorry, I was like half-dead when I dragged in last night so I don’t know if I caught your name,” Noah is saying, and Ren’s pulled out of the basement and back to Tokyo, but slowly, too slow to sound smooth when he answers. It’s so much harder with people he likes. How did you live like this?

“Oh, no worries. I’m Ren.”

Noah’s lips quirk in a little almost-smile. “Wren, like the bird?”

“No, like….”

_Like what_ , he wonders. Parents pick out the kanji that make up their child’s name painstakingly, make it meaningful and perfectly balanced so it doesn’t bring bad luck. But he doesn’t know his, doesn’t know if he ever had any. One of his temporary roommates was showing off a brand new electronic dictionary with a kanji look-up feature last night, and when it got passed around to him, he timidly typed in “REN” and hit the search button, trying to find himself in the index. He found a hundred other things; “Lotus.” “Beloved.” “Ripples.” “Silk” and “scallions.” A “box for grains,” and a “box for makeup.” Just lines criss-crossing and running side by side, nothing he recognized or could call his own.

“Well, like Ren, I guess,” he says, smiling sheepishly. “It’s Japanese.”

Noah smiles and Ren would like to keep that smile, would like to preserve it under glass if he could. He doesn’t trust anything to stay the same. “Gotcha! So are you visiting family or something?”

“No,” Ren says absently. “Just on vacation.” He reaches for the bag just as Noah does, and their fingers bump, and they both jolt like startled birds before they laugh it off. He doesn’t want to read into it but he does, he always does. You did that, he knows you did, manufactured connections to people who barely knew you, but god it’s so lonely out here if you don’t.

“Well, we should hang out,” Noah says. “I gotta catch a train in like five minutes to make this tour in Asakusa, but I’m free the rest of the time.”

“I’d like to hang out,” Ren says, smiling, so it’s decided. They’ll get together tomorrow morning and figure out where to go from there. Noah talks too much and has to sprint to catch his train, and Ren’s left watching him from the hostel door, thinking that his legs are good, strong, would look pretty all bruised. He doesn’t want to think about it but it comes to him anyway, rising from the murmur of the morning rush. You’re there, whispering. Ren takes the train to Akihabara to get away from you, but it’s hard. The backpack he’s wearing is yours, too, excavated from the back of a closet where everything smelled like must and unfinished things.

And that’s why you would hate this. Not because it’s an indulgence, which it is, because you know indulgences. You understand those. Ate, slept, breathed and lived them. That’s all you were and all you left behind and that’s what he has to deal with now, all of these indulgences imprinted on his skin. The deeper ones, too, left in places he can’t reach. This trip is an indulgence but it’s also something else, something unforgivable.

The crowd swells from a trickle off of the train into a swift-moving current of bodies. A woman in a maid uniform hands him a packet of tissues. Every building is brightly colored, plastered with familiar faces—this season’s magical girls and monster hunters. He knows them better than he knows any of his neighbors back home, their blood types, their birthdays, their childhood secrets. They’ve kept him company, been there through every crisis since the house has grown uncomfortably quiet.

A life-sized cut out of Magical Ninja Nurse Ruriko holds her leaf-shaped crystal wand skyward in front of a convenience store, her speech bubble proclaiming that the daily specials are roe rice balls and chocolate custard rolls. Ren fumbles for his phone, takes a selfie next to her and saves it as his new background. There’s a man around the corner who gives him another package of tissues. Right now, he can’t hear you. It’s not quiet, it’s just too loud. Akihabara sparkles like a kingdom of light, all electric noise and candy colors. He lets himself get lost in it.

Half of his budget for the trip was set aside just for this; gachapon machines. Character hoodies with animal ears. Figurines with lovingly detailed skirt pleats and panties underneath. Hardcore doujinshi that the clerk kindly conceals in brown paper envelopes. He’s got more tissues than he’s ever going to need again. There’s a seven-story megastore with every square inch covered in anime merch and he’s entertaining the notion of just spending the rest of his trip here in otaku heaven as he drifts through the shelves like a ragged man staggering through an oasis.

There’s a body pillow with a blushing Ruriko trying to hide her face in her hands, and it’s in his arms before he’s consciously aware that he’s picked it up, but he can’t remember where the drama CDs are, or if he even saw them on his way up. The poster on the wall by the stairs has the entire cast of Sakura Idol Girls!! in Meiji schoolgirl uniforms, their kimono sleeves long and fluttering, drifting flower petals scattered across their hakama. A petite woman dressed just like them stands beside it, fiddling with something on the nearest display case, and he wanders over to her slowly. He’s watched just enough anime that he can occasionally frankenstein together sentences in ways that earn a slow, wary nod or concerned stare, but he’s a little nervous and a little embarrassed and can he even pantomime the concept of “drama CDs?”

He says, “Um. _Sumimasen,”_ and she bristles like a startled animal, whirling around with a sharp, squeaky, “ _E-eh?”_ She’s wearing an eyepatch, a little white square fastened with thin strings that disappears behind the hime cut framing her face, a cute cosplay. Ren is staring and she’s staring back and he’s still holding this body pillow that’s as tall as him, and in a flash, like lightning—

(He hears you—)

Blood on yukata sleeves, red staining silver needlework and flower embroidery. His hands cup her tear-stained face and he can taste the bite wound still oozing on her lip.

He blinks and it’s gone, but it isn’t really. It’s burned to the inside of his eyelids and he keeps catching glimpses. It isn’t supposed to be like this. He tries to pretend it isn’t, like you aren’t here, like he can’t hear you, opens his mouth but all he does is squeak because how do you even say “what floor” in Japanese? He can’t think of anything right now but what she’d look like gored up in your basement, and she’s staring with one big doe eye and that isn’t helping at all. “Um,” he mutters a few times.

“Are you looking for something?” she says, in English. Her accent’s strong but she’s beaming, head tilted with a patient smile.

“Yeah!” he says, relief slamming into him like a rogue wave. “What floor are the drama CDs on?”

“Ah,” she nods, still smiling, and goes down the stairs. Bewildered, Ren follows, trotting after her through rows and endless rows of anime soundtracks and opening singles. Her hakama sways around her ankles and her boots click loudly on the tile floor. “There are a lot,” she tells him, her voice soft, and Ren is thinking that people like her can be surprisingly loud. They scream more than anyone so hurting them is like doing them a favor, like unblocking their throat, letting them be free, be themselves. They cry, and they’re embarrassed that they cry, they feel like they have to prove something so they’ll do anything you ask. They make good, obedient little pets.

“Drama CD?” he hears her ask.

“Th-thanks,” he stammers. A distraction, he needs a distraction. He looks at the line of CDs crammed floor to ceiling in the case in front of him, jewel cases bright and glinting where they catch the harsh white store lights. There’s even more stacks piled on display tables and a whole basket of new releases. He can’t read any of them, can’t even hazard a guess as to which one is which, but he pretends he does. He picks a CD off of the shelf just to have something in his hands, to turn over, to look at now and then.

“Actually,” she says shyly, “I don’t work here,” and Ren’s face is as hot as the surface of the sun.

“I-I’m sorry! I just, I saw your cosplay and I thought—” He stops. She’s blinking slowly, her expression twisting in further confusion.

“It’s. Ah. Not cosplay.”

_Fire me into the fucking sun,_ he thinks. He’s so embarrassed he feels faint, woozy, and he leans against the drama CD shelf with his gaze searching frantically for the fastest exit. The stairs. The elevator. A window.

Then she laughs. “It’s okay. You thought so because of what I’m wearing? _Ne?_ But this is just how I dress.”  She holds her hand in front of her mouth like she’s embarrassed to be smiling. “But I’m happy you asked me. It’s fun to talk to people.”

“Oh,” Ren says. She’s still standing there, smiling. She hasn’t stormed off, rightfully offended, or cursed him out or anything. So, carefully, he says, “Um. I’m Ren.”

“Ren,” she echoes, her smile widening. “I’m Chirino, Momoka. Just Momoka is okay.” She holds her hands together in front of her hakama, crossed one over the other. “Ah, Ren. Do you like anime?”

Ren glances over at her, his backpack overflowing with gachapon capsules and figurines, the body pillow draped over one arm, a stack of doujinshi and a Blu-Ray box set of the entire three-series, two OVAs and spin-off collection of Magical Ninja Nurse Ruriko tucked into the other. “Uh,” he says. “A little.”

“I haven’t watched a lot,” she admits. “But recently, I wanted to know what young people in big cities like. It’s,” she pauses, frowning, then snaps her fingers. “Ah! Market research! I’m in Akihabara now, for research.”

“Oh, that’s really cool.”

“Yes!” she agrees, and Ren finds himself smiling, too. So they talk a little more, trade some benign ice breakers about the summer heat. She sticks to his side all the way back down through trading cards, light novels, little trinkety souvenirs, down to the register counter and out onto the sidewalk. Suddenly she looks lost, nervously twining her fingers together like she’s having second thoughts. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I followed you.”

“It’s okay,” he assures her, even when he sees himself doing terrible things to her, pulling her hair and sinking his teeth into her neck, hearing the sweet noises she could make. He ignores them. He ignores you, your presence, your breath on the back of his neck. “Are you doing anything right now? I have to drop this stuff off, but we can hang out for a bit, if you want.”

Momoka clams up, though, not quite looking at him. That nervous air around her just gets thicker, and Ren feels his smile slipping, his heart beating faster. This isn’t good. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Did he do something, he’s thinking, did he say something, and what was it, what did he say, why is she shrinking back like that? _Why is she trying to leave?_

“Do you have LINE?” he presses, holding up his phone.

“No,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

Ren’s smile wavers but he holds onto it. “Don’t worry about it. How about an email address?”

“I don’t have that.” She takes a step back from him. Her hands clutch the front of her hakama and squeeze anxiously. She looks nervous and that’s not good, that’s not what he wants. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to follow you.”

“It’s fine, really,” Ren insists, and he steps closer when she takes another one back, panic seizing him, because she’s leaving, why is she leaving, nobody is supposed to leave. He’s struck by the sudden irrational thought that she _knows_ somehow, can see something on his skin or in his eyes that gives him away. “I’d like to see you again,” he says, desperately.

Momoka glances at him warily. “Ah,” she says, and that worries him, that makes him start thinking of drastic measures, duct tape and electric cords and could he even find something to put in her drink, but then she opens her drawstring purse and pulls out a phone. It’s the same prepaid kind they sell at the tourist shop at Shinjuku station. He relaxes. He realizes just how close he got. Momoka looks at him nervously and he backs off just a little, giving them both room to breathe. When he tries exchanging numbers, she hesitates, handing the phone to him instead.

“I’m from a small town,” she says, clearly embarrassed. He’s wondering just how small. “Things like technology are difficult for me. And I,” she hesitates again, biting her lower lip. “I’m embarrassed when I talk to you. It’s fun, but it’s difficult. I sound stupid when I speak English. But I’m not stupid!”

“Of course you’re not,” Ren says, all of the tension in his body leaking out in a rush, a heavy sigh. “I know what you mean. I don’t really know any Japanese except like “ _ohayou”_ and “ _arigatou,”_ stuff like that. I don’t know any of the words I actually need.” He rakes a hand through his hair, laughing it off, but there’s still a slight tremor in his hands. “Your English is way better than my Japanese, anyway. But I should probably learn more, right? Would that make it easier for us to talk?”

Momoka makes a series of noises that he thinks are the start of words, a blush steadily deepening on her face. “You don’t have to!” she manages to blurt out finally. “That’s very nice. And if you want to, that’s good. But you don’t have to. I like talking to you. I just want you to know, I’m actually very smart in Japanese.”

“I believe you,” Ren assures her, grinning. “Maybe we could help each other practice? If you don’t mind me sounding really stupid in Japanese.” Momoka’s smile gets big and she hides it behind her sleeve. Her blush reaches her ears. Ren wants to tease her about it but his arms are getting sore with all the stuff he’s holding. “Oh, uh. Maybe first, do you mind helping me find a post office? I’m gonna have to mail this stuff home, there’s no way it’s fitting in my suitcase.”

Momoka smiles brightly and nods, stopping a passerby to ask for directions. Ren feels better, like he’s in control again. He falls into step with Momoka and talks, easily, like people do out here. A light breeze ruffles her hair and he catches a glimpse of the nape of her neck. He inhales, smells a light, flowery perfume. He salivates, just a little. He sees her in the basement and him over her and you, right behind him, your shadow so much bigger than it has any right to be.

*

I didn’t come to Tokyo to hurt anyone, he thinks.

You sneer at him. “Yes, you did,” you say with your hands wrapped around his neck, tighter and tighter, digging into his skin with a familiar, terrible, comforting weight.

*

_“Ikura? Ikura desuka?_ Right? _”_ Ren asks, glancing at Momoka out of the corner of his eye. She’s nods proudly. The maid cafe waitress dutifully rattles off the cost of the double ice cream combo with a bright smile and tilt of her head, but he honestly doesn’t know how to count any higher than four so he just nods and orders it anyway.

“The double?” Momoka asks curiously. “That’s a lot of ice cream.”

“We can share, right?” he says slyly. Momoka blushes at seemingly everything, but this also makes her laugh and stammer that he didn’t have to, and he likes that, but he feels distinctly that he’s scratching all around the place that actually itches. You’re on the other side of the table in that empty chair, laughing at him. He doesn’t look because he can’t look. If he looks, he’ll see you, your smirk, your cracked ribs, your bloodied empty space punched through the center of your chest. If he looks, it’ll make you real. He clears his throat. “So how long will you be in Tokyo for? I don’t wanna take up all your time or something if you’re trying to work, but it’d be fun to see more of the city together. I made a friend at the place I’m staying, if you don’t mind hanging out with both of us.” He swirls the crinkly, bitten end of his straw in the melting ice at the bottom of his glass absently, making plans. They’d get along, wouldn’t they? He’d like it if they did. He’d like to take pictures together, eat out together.

Both of them, in the basement. Together.

_“Don’t get greedy,”_ you’d say. Like if he wanted another sandwich after dinner. You were a hypocrite. You always just did what you wanted, so why should he have to limit himself?

“I would like to meet your friend!” Momoka says eagerly. “What do you want to do in Tokyo?”

“I don’t know,” Ren admits. “I didn’t really come with a solid plan or anything. This whole trip was kind of sudden.”

“It was sudden?”

“Well, uh. I. I kind of. Um.” He carefully considers what he wants to say, because you’re right there, he knows, he hears you breathing, and that makes all of this harder. “The truth is. Um. Someone in my family died.”

Momoka gasps, a wounded look in her eyes.

“So I inherited a bunch of money. And, uh. This is what I decided to do with it.” He sounds ashamed because he is. He bows his head, tucks his chin against his chest, and he squeezes his eyes shut. If he doesn’t look, if he waits, if he breathes in and counts to fifty and then breathes out, everything will be okay.

“I’m very sorry,” Momoka says quietly.

“It’s okay.”

“If you want, we can go to a shrine? And you can pray for your family. You can tell them you’re okay, so they don’t worry.”

Ren’s smile seems to get stuck in place. He doesn’t much feel like smiling anymore, but it won’t go away. “Yeah. We could do that.”

“Only if you want to,” she says firmly. She scoots closer to him in the booth, so close that her hakama bunches up at his thigh, trapped between their bodies. There are a thousand things he could do with her this close but what he does is look up and smile, and appreciate the little bit of blush dusting her cheeks.

“Momoka, you’re really nice,” he says. “I’m going to be sad when I have to go home. I wish I could take you with me.”

A number of emotions flicker across Momoka’s face in rapid succession, but she settles on something soft and sympathetic. “Yes, I’ll be sad, too. So we should enjoy all the time we still have.”

Which is when the ice cream arrives, delivered by a pair of maids who start chanting and doing a little dance in front of the table. Ren looks to Momoka, bewildered, and she’s clapping with an expression of great amusement, so he just follows her lead. “What did they say?” he whispers.

She smiles sagely. “They said a magic spell to fill the ice cream with love.”

It’s almost too cute to eat. A huge scoop of vanilla decorated with sprinkles of chocolate form a cat face peering up out of the glass. Momoka’s is strawberry, a rabbit with cookies for ears. Ren pushes them side by side for a picture and changes the background on his phone again. He makes a scandalized noise when she plucks the cookie ear off of her rabbit to nibble on the end. “Well, what about you?” he asks. “Is there anything you really wanted to see here?”

“Ah, I also don’t have a plan.”

“Oh. Sudden trip for you, too, huh?”

Momoka’s spoon cuts through the rabbit, leaving behind a crater like an impacted skull. “Maybe,” she says. “But I can only stay until Sunday.”

Ren frowns. “That’s only a few more days.”

“Mm. I only have permission for that long.”

“Permission?”

There’s a long pause. Ren sees her stare down into her ice cream as though searching for answers. “From work,” she explains eventually. “I can’t miss too much.”

“Oh, gotcha.”

The conversation grows stilted and Ren reluctantly slices into his ice cream cat. That story about receiving an inheritance was impulsive, too close to the truth. You wouldn’t like this part, either. People who travel all want to talk about travel, as if they aren’t already in the middle of it, as if they need more, and every awkward encounter he’s had so far has been with a fellow tourist who stands too close and smiles too much and wants to know, “So why Tokyo?” like it’s any of their business.

But since he was never going to see any of them again, he just lied. His friend in Tokyo was getting married, he said, or he was studying abroad, or he got a job teaching English. They were needlessly complicated stories that just became more elaborate the longer he had to stand there, but he wanted to try, at least. He wanted to see if he could erase you from the picture altogether, if he could excise you, like a malignant growth, from his life. The strangers in airports were none the wiser, but he knew he hadn’t accomplished anything. He always walked away with a sick feeling in his gut and your footsteps right behind him.

“You know,” he says, “I think I’d like to go to a shrine sometime. Just to visit, at least.” He keeps his head down and his eyes on Momoka, her hands folded in her lap, so he can’t see the way you look at him. “I don’t know how I feel about praying, but I still want to go.”

Momoka looks startled. “That’s okay. Don’t do things you don’t like. If you just want to see it, I think Kanda Myojin is close to here. Lots of people go there to pray for their business, or good luck.”

Ren doesn’t know much about praying, or about gods. What would he even ask for? He doesn’t think he can put his feelings into words, much less fling them at some great big thing and expect it to help instead of laugh at him. You’re laughing, too, just thinking about it. “Do you go to shrines a lot?” he asks her.

She touches her fingers to her chin. “Ah. Not a lot. There are different gods at different shrines, to help with different problems. For most people, it’s okay to visit any of them, but I,” she pauses, her mouth closing slowly, and Ren sees a struggle that he relates to, the frantic search for the right words. She glances at him shyly. “How would you say, someone who likes traditional things? Or traditional ways of doing things?”

“Like, old-fashioned?”

“Mm.” She nods. “I’m old-fashioned. I only see one god.”

Ren nods. He stretches his legs out under the table, and his thigh brushes against Momoka’s again. She looks down but doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t move away. “Do they do exorcisms at shrines?” he asks quietly.

Momoka’s gaze snaps up abruptly. “ _Eh?”_

He laughs. “No, I’m. I’m kidding.”

(He’s not, actually. He’s desperate. You shouldn’t be here, but you are.)

His ice cream’s nearly liquid in the summer heat, the cat little more than a milky puddle in the narrow bottom of the glass. Ren scoops out what he can and it melts on his tongue. “You’re really nice,” he says. He’s already told her that but it bears repeating. Maybe he’s trying to apologize in advance. To make sure he doesn’t feel guilty later. You’re laughing at him. You were always laughing.

Slowly, shyly, Momoka inches closer. Their shoulders rub together. Ren burns with the desire to do something that he’ll regret later, and keeps his shaking hands clasped together over the table.

When the bill comes, there is a brief, playful scuffle over who gets to pay, and in the end, they split it. They make their way through Akihabara in nonsensical circles, wandering into anything that catches their eye. Ren thinks he embarasses himself at a drumming game but no one’s staring when he turns around except Momoka, and she just gives him a round of applause. They squeeze though a cosplay store, a cat cafe, a noodle shop. A pale green torii gate wedged between buildings startles him. Momoka tells him that Kanda Shrine is up ahead, past the crimson gate.

“You think this is going to help?” you say, always right behind him, your footsteps a perfect echo of his. “It won’t. Nothing will.”

What do you know? he thinks derisively. What have you ever known but how to get what you want?

Days pass so much more quickly in the world beyond your house. The sun rests on the shimmering horizon like a buoy on the sea, and dusk stretches long and grasping across the shrine grounds. Cicadas keen in the waning heat as Momoka leads him to the stone basin where he’s supposed to wash his hands. “To purify yourself,” she says, ladling water over her slender fingers. He stands next to her, and feels you standing next to him. You’re sneering, probably. Nothing has ever been sacred to you.

“Hey, Ren!” someone cries, and his gaze snaps up to where Noah is jogging over from the front of the shrine, smile like sunshine. “Aw man, I’m glad to see you, but I kinda wanted this to be a surprise.”

“Surprise?” Ren echoes.

Noah grabs his wrist and crams something soft into his palm. It’s a protective charm from the shrine with Michiko from Sakura Idol Girls!! emblazoned on the front, dressed in a shrine maiden’s uniform. “Uh. I don’t know which one she is, or if that’s your favorite,” Noah says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck, “but I think she’s the one on your phone case, right?”

“She is!!” Ren doesn’t realize he shouted until he sees both of them go wide-eyed. “U-um, thanks, Noah. I really like it.” His face is burning when he shoves the charm in his pocket. “Oh, uh, since you’re both here—Noah, this is Momoka, we met in Akiba earlier. Momoka, this is Noah, the friend I told you about.”

“Hey!” Noah says, sticking out a hand. Momoka takes it with a startled look, but she eventually smiles and gives a slight bow. “Nice to meet you! You wanna hang out? Ren and I were trying to come up with stuff to do tomorrow. I mean, if you’re not busy or anything.”

“If it’s okay,” Momoka says shyly.

“Yeah, why not? Right, Ren?”

Ren nods, and he’s happy, he is, but he also feels sick with you standing so close, too close to them. “Cute, aren’t they?” you say in a low purr. “You’ve got a type, you know. You see what I do.”

He’s shaking his head, trying to get rid of you. His hands are still damp with holy water and the wind makes them cold. “Hey, can we see the shrine up close?” he asks, and he hopes his voice isn’t trembling. He just wants to get them away from you.

“You think your hands are clean?” you hiss.

There are great stone pillars with komainu guardians perched atop each. A cord of rope hangs across the entrance, the strips of paper dangling from it blowing lightly in the wind. Inside, a group of people are sitting in silence, their heads lowered before an altar. Momoka leads them up to the collection box, bows, and tosses in some change. Noah gingerly drops a coin in.

“I heard you can pray for money and stuff here. Can you do it? I don’t know any Japanese,” he says with an embarrassed laugh.

Momoka looks surprised at the request but she smiles, glancing at Ren. “Ren? Did you want anything? I can ask for you.”

He hesitates for a very, very long time. “I don’t really want anything.” You’re cackling and he hates the noise, so he adds, just to spite you, “Maybe a prayer for better luck in relationships! But that’s probably a different shrine, right?”

“Uh, can we get two of those?” Noah says, and Ren’s heart beats faster.

Momoka giggles, then tries to hide it with her sleeve, embarrassed. “It’s funny to pray for luck in love at the business shrine. But why not? Ebisu has good hearing, he can pass it along.” She claps twice, closes her eyes for a while, and bows low. “If it’s the same prayer three times, they have to listen, _ne?”_

“What, really? I thought I was the only one who had crap luck with that kind of thing,” Ren says, cheeks burning. His smile’s the uncontrollable kind that creeps up on its own and trembles nervously, aching in a fun, carefree way. Noah’s got the same kind of cautious happiness on his face, hands jammed in his jean pockets.

“Nah, I’m single as hell,” he says, shrugging. “I’m a magnet for assholes. My last partner stole a bunch of my shit when they moved out and broke the TV.”

Momoka makes that sympathetic gasping noise. “That’s so bad! I’m also unlucky.” She hesitates, glancing at both of them. “Ah. It’s embarrassing. I had a stalker recently. He left weird things in my mail, like a dead animal. It was scary.”

“Wow, okay, you win. Unless,” Noah pauses, glancing at Ren. An invitation to share his own misery.

“Go on,” you whisper, your fingers curling tightly around his shoulder. “Say it. Tell them what I did to you. Tell them what you did to me.”

He didn’t do anything to you. He squeezes his eyes shut, breathes in, holds it, breathes out in a shaky rush. They’re both looking at him, worried. Noah says his name all soft and scared and he doesn’t see Tokyo anymore, doesn’t see anything but the thick shadows in your basement, the post you tied people to like dogs, all the sharp things on the wall with steel teeth. And you’re there, waiting. Your hand reaches out of the dark, inviting, offering, but they aren’t yours to give.

They’re _mine,_ he thinks viciously. He reaches out and grabs their hands, Noah’s in his right and Momoka’s in his left. He wraps his fingers around theirs and holds on tight. There’s no room for you here. “Mine was the worst,” he tells them. He sounds a little proud. “But it’s over now. All of that stuff’s behind us. We should have fun, all three of us.”

“Three of us?” Momoka echoes, trying to hide her blush with her other hand. “Ah. Really?”

“I mean, it could be fun,” Noah says, suddenly shy, looking back and forth from Ren to Momoka and back with growing confidence. “Yeah, it could be a lot of fun. We’re only gonna be here a little bit, after all. We should make the most of it.”

Ren smiles because they’re good and kind and perfect. They look at him fondly. They do what he asks. Sweet and obedient. The sun sets on Kanda Shrine but they’re still holding hands in the dark all the way back to the heart of Akihabara, and they’re his. You can’t have them. You can’t even get close to them. When they get to the train station, Momoka splits off because she’s staying in Ikebukuro, and there’s a second where Ren catches her wrist so suddenly she lets out this breathy, startled noise and it’s his new favorite sound she can make.

“Meet us at the hostel early?” Ren says, and he sounds soft and gentle, he makes sure to smile, but there’s a hard undertone of a demand in his voice. Her pulse flutters under his thumb and she nods quickly. He learned this from you. “Great! I’ll send you the address.”

“See you then!” Noah waves, and Momoka returns it cutely, scurrying onto the next train. While they wait on the platform, Ren laces his fingers with Noah, and he gets an affectionate squeeze in return. “She’s cute,” he says, winking. “Almost as cute as you.”

Ren laughs, ecstatic, excited, a little overwhelmed. “I can’t believe you guys are real. And that you’re on board for this...whatever it is.”

“Well, why not, right?” Noah shrugs. “Dunno if I’ll ever be in Japan again, and who knows if we’ll stay in touch or not?”

Ren’s grip tightens. “We’ll stay in touch,” he says.

They stop at a Tokyu Hands on the way back, lured in by a sale rack at the very front. Noah digs through a pile of erasers shaped like cartoon animals and Ren wanders, lightheaded with anticipation. Everything is perfect; a morning spent in Akihabara, afternoon snacks at a maid cafe, and two people who look at him like something treasured. He’s on cloud nine, in paradise, throwing things in a basket absently, dreaming while he’s awake. He meets Noah at the checkout and they stand close and this is real, this is actually happening. He’s paying for his purchases and taking his bags full of cute bandaids and disinfectant and duct tape and brand new Japanese cutlery when he realizes what he just bought. Wait, he’s thinking, wait, wait, wait, when did I—why did I—?

And you’re there, of course. You’re never not there. He keeps his head down and his eyes forward so all he catches is glimpses, wisps and shadows. But you’re there, he knows.

“You have to train them, of course,” you’re saying. “You have to make sure they listen to you. That they aren’t going to leave.”

Shut up, he thinks, because this has nothing to do with you. That’s not what this is about. You didn’t take care of the your kitchen knives well enough and they weren’t good ones, anyway, not the nicer brands. And anyway, with them, with Noah and Momoka, who are not yours and who you cannot have, he’s actually going to love them, and take care of them, and show them what it feels like to be treasured. He’s going to do what you never could, you miserable, selfish, disgusting, cruel wretched horrible human garbage waste of space heartless fucking monster why did you leave him alone here to figure this shit out on his own how could you do this to him how could you just _leave—_

“Ren?” Noah says.

And, oh. They’re almost back. He’s twisting the plastic bag’s handles so tightly he’s almost torn them off. The hostel’s a squat building at the end of the block, lit up blindingly bright. The lights are dimmed in their hallway and it feels like getting away with something when he quietly shoves his bags into the back of his sleeping cube for later. Maybe he really does just want some new cookware, he tells himself. Maybe that’s all he was thinking about. Noah winks at him when he ambles off to the bathroom to wash up, and Ren’s body is hot with both wanting and shame.

This isn’t normal. He knows that. He knows he needs to mail these knives home tomorrow before something awful happens. He tells himself he will.

But that night, he has a nightmare. You know which one.

He wakes up gasping for air, wrapped in a cocoon of sweat-soaked sheets. He staggers through the dark in search of the bathroom and hears you follow. He keeps his gaze level when he clutches the edge of the sink and peers into the watery, bloodshot eyes of his ragged reflection. Then lower, slowly, to the red marks ringing his throat, banded bruises in the shape of fingers. His stomach churns and he feels violently nauseous, and he can’t tell if he needs to eat or if he needs to vomit, so he curls up on the bathroom floor and waits for it to pass. The tile is cool on his overheated skin.

You’re there, crouched behind him. You trace his bruises with your fingers.

“What do you want?” he whispers. “I don’t have anything left. What the fuck do you want from me?”

And you laugh, like always. It’s all he can hear


	2. 破

You wouldn’t like what he does with your jacket.

He knows what you’re thinking, and no, it’s not like that. Nothing obscene or destructive. Maybe he’s thought about it. Maybe those first few nights were hard. Every square inch of the house reeked of you but there was something more clinging to your clothes, something subtle but unmistakable, and it didn’t go away even after the third wash. He couldn’t sleep the first night, or the second, and on the third he slipped into unconsciousness with the TV on in the background, his body shutting down without permission. But the fourth night, he curled up in bed with your jacket. He’d left it draped over a chair but the sight of it across the room, waiting, scared him. So he had to take it, right? He had to make sure. He had to wear it so it wasn’t vacant, or you might think he was inviting you back. 

Clothes, he finds out, are powerful. The well-worn kind hold onto people, keep parts of them in their stretched seams and crooked zippers. You’re here, in this jacket, even after he’s mended it and scrubbed out the stains and done everything to chase you away. It was stupid to bring you along, but he was afraid that if he left the jacket behind, he’d go home and find you sitting in an armchair. You’d have grown back, snaking out of the armholes and the collar, like a persistent weed that won’t die. 

So when Noah flings a jacket at him from a summer specials rack somewhere along Takeshita Street, yours goes around his waist. Momoka offers to hold it but that would inviting disaster. She doesn’t know what you’re capable of. 

The two of them are in good spirits, tugging Ren along excitedly from train stop to train stop, to crepe stands, to parks, to the Hachiko statue where they all smiled for the camera and Ren changed his phone background again. It’s sweltering with the summer sun hovering directly overhead. Noah’s opted for shorts today and rolled up his sleeves, and Ren’s tried not to get caught stealing glances. Noah likes stripes and contrasts, little details. A cartoon penguin peeks out of the pocket of his shirt. Ren thinks they’re content-looking clothes. Upbeat like Noah. They tell him kind things.

“So?” Noah presses, awaiting an opinion.

Ren gives himself a once-over in the floor-length store mirror. The nicest word he can think of is “busy.” The jacket they found for him is five different colors and two different patterns, paper lanterns across the left half, bubble letters across the right spelling out obscenities. “Uh. Not for me,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s a little much, I guess.” Noah glances across the street at a place with a punk rock display in the window, leather jackets with spikes on the shoulders and bullet belts. “Man, we gotta get  _ something _ , though. Like, they don’t have to be identical, but they should be close. We gotta match!” 

Momoka wanders back from the depths of the store with a horse mask in her hands, presenting it with a flourish. “We can get these!” she says. She doesn’t have a poker face, and she’s broken out into laughter before they can even entertain the thought that she might be serious.

“Momoka, where did you  _ find _ that?” 

“Come see,” she says, beckoning them both over. She surprised them both when she turned up at the youth hostel this morning in western clothing, a first in their short relationship. Her blouse is off-white and her skirt is long, high-waisted yet sweeping around her ankles, and that suits her, he thinks. Maybe he wishes he could see more than a flash of her ankles, but she looks comfortable like that, peaceful even. Momoka’s clothes are light and graceful. They speak softly and move in gentle ways.

“See?” she says, pointing up at a shelf of rubber animal heads. “They’re a bit scary, aren’t they?” Noah tries convincing her to put it on but she’s blushing, shaking her head emphatically, making those flustered, mewling noises. Something catches Ren’s attention behind both of them; another rack of jackets, but these aren’t the thin, cartoonishly patterned ones like at the front. They’re bulkier, the same shape and style as a college varsity jacket, but the fabric is different and the patterns on them are of waves and tigers and things he’d expect on a kimono or a yakuza tattoo.

On the back of one, a fox sits in a storm of cherry blossoms, its nine tails threaded between the falling petals. He takes it off of the hanger to look at, tracing the golden thread outlining the fox’s body with his fingertips. This jacket doesn’t belong to anyone, but he feels distinctly that it’s trying to say something.

“Hey, Momoka, what’s this? Some kind of letter jacket?” he asks. 

She’s got the horse head on. Noah is snickering, trying to get a picture where she isn’t holding her hands up in front of her, and gets his chance when she turns, startled at the question. Quickly, she peels off the mask and her eye lights up. “Ah, sukajan,” she says. “The jacket is an American style, but the detail is Japanese. Kind of intimidating, I think.” 

Noah’s next to him in an instant, going through the jackets with interest. “Those are sick! What if we all got one? I’m really feeling this wave one. That’s a carp, right?” 

They must be there for half an hour, just pulling out jackets to look at and try on. The woman at the register counter keeps peering back at them suspiciously. Noah’s torn between the carp and one with a deer, and Momoka looks warily at all of them, seemingly afraid to touch. Ren doesn’t need to look any further, though. He clutches the fox in his hands decisively. 

He has family here, in the loosest sense. Blood relatives whose faces he can’t clearly recall. Would they even recognize his? He had a fleeting thought while he was on the plane about trying to find them, of rediscovering his roots. He watched an anime like that recently; after her single mother dies, a girl travels to the countryside to find the youkai half of her heritage. She takes a bullet train, then a bus, and as she’s walking a dirt road into a remote mountain town she’s never heard of or seen before, she starts to think that it might’ve been a mistake. 

_ What if nobody’s home? _ she thinks first.  _ No, worse, what if there isn’t a home? What if they moved? Or, worse yet—what if they don’t care? We’ve never met, after all. What if I came all this way and all I find is a house full of strangers? _

But she doesn’t, of course. Everyone loves her by episode five, even the tsundere tanuki neighbor, and she settles into her new home, confident she’ll never be alone again. If only anything in Ren’s life could ever wrap up so neatly.

“What do you think?” Noah says, holding up two new ones. “Crane or tiger? Or, huh, the rabbit on the moon’s cool, too.” 

“The rabbit,” Ren tells him. He reaches out to touch the design, tracing its tightly-stitched fur. “It’s perfect for you. Cute and high-energy.” He gets self-conscious when he tries flirting for all of half a second before Noah’s gaze softens and he hugs Ren so hard and fast it’s like a collision. Noah tries it on just to see, tugs at the sleeves, and turns in front of them to show off the design. 

“The rabbit suits you,” Momoka says cheerfully. “You’re just like the moon rabbit. Do you know about him?” 

Ren’s heard this one—it was in a romcom anime about Princess Kaguya. Rabbit and his friends, Fox and Monkey, came upon a dying man in the woods and wanted to help him. Fox caught a fish in his mouth and Monkey plucked fruits from a tree, but Rabbit felt inadequate; all he knew how to do was pick grass. So he asked his friends to build him a fire, and once it had sparked to life, he threw himself in. “Let my body be food for you,” he told the dying man. And the man, touched by this show of selflessness, revealed himself to be a god in disguise. Rabbit was plucked from the flames and given a second life upon the moon as a reward for his actions.

“Throwing yourself in a fire is pretty next level,” Noah says, laughing. “I dunno if I’m  _ that _ selfless.” 

“You do pay for a lot of stuff, though,” Ren points out. “You’ve bought basically all of the snack food I’ve had since I got here.” 

Noah looks surprised. “Huh. Have I really?” 

It really is perfect, Ren thinks, which only leaves Momoka fidgeting in the corner. 

“You find one you like?” he asks, drifting over to help her look. A flowery pattern catches his eye and he pulls out one with a curling phoenix on the back. “How about this?” 

“Ah,” she says.

Noah puts his hand next to his mouth and says in a stage whisper, “That’s Momoka-speak for ‘Fuck off with that shit.’” 

She gasps. “It’s not! I wouldn’t say something so mean!” Shyly, she ducks her head. “But a sukajan doesn’t really suit me, I think.”  

For some reason, this really bothers him. Ren clutches the fox-patterned garment in both hands, protective of something he can’t name. “But we have to match,” he says stubbornly. “There’s gotta be one you like somewhere. Maybe another store’ll have different ones?” It’s such a small, silly gesture, scavenging the fashion district for something they all love and can share, so people know at a glance that they’re together in some way. Like friendship bracelets, Noah had said jokingly earlier in the hostel lobby, and Momoka had giggled, but Ren was dead serious when he said he liked the idea. He wanted something significant like that, something to bind them together so it would be harder to lose each other, harder to forget. Every night he realizes this vacation is another day closer to being over and he panics just a little, lays awake staring at the wood paneling separating his sleeping cube from Noah’s. 

He thinks about crawling up there. Getting in with him. Touching each other, kissing, having sex. Biting, leaving marks, so that there’s something to make it real, tangible, easy to see. They’ve exchanged all the contact information they possibly can but none of it is enough. People leave. It doesn’t matter what they’ve said or done, how many times they’ve claimed you and loved you and hurt you. They just vanish sometimes, without warning. That’s why he herds them together like sheep when they all start drifting apart in a crowd, grabbing Momoka’s sleeve or Noah’s wrist and keeping them from losing each other. Maybe he holds on a little too hard sometimes.

Takeshita Street is congested with shoulder-to-shoulder foot traffic, throngs of bodies drifting with an unseen current. Noah gets a shirt for his sister with some bizarre English text on the front, and Momoka finds a sunhat with a plastic flower on the side. Ren keeps your jacket tied around his waist, and sometimes he thinks he sees you. Your figure somewhere in the crowd. The back of your head reflected in a shop window. He turns and you’re gone but you were there, he’s sure of it. You’re watching. All the while, the fox on the back of his new jacket presses up against the plastic bag he carries, as though eager to burst into the world.

He isn’t like Noah. He doesn’t know any stories about selfless foxes. Kitsune are tricksters at the best of times and monsters at their very worst. He’s heard about how a man was lured into the woods by a beautiful woman, and his family searched for him for months. He finally turned up, ragged, bitten, covered in dirt, having crawled out of a fox den when the spell wore off and he realized he’d been deceived. That’s the sort of thing foxes do. He looks at Noah and Momoka and feels a little guilty.

The shining silk of a sukajan sleeve catches the sun just right and Ren pulls them both along for another detour. Momoka is unimpressed again, gently refusing the pipe-smoking courtesan design as well as the river squiggling beneath torii gates. “Hey, we could always get something else that matches,” Noah says, but Ren refuses. You could be belligerent like this when you didn’t get your way, too, and he hates that he has that in him, too. But he and Noah already bought their sukajan and it can’t be just two of them, because then there’s nothing connecting them to Momoka and he needs them both, needs proof that they’re his.

“But they aren’t,” you say, whispering in his ear. “Not until you make them yours.”

“How about this?” Ren says, holding one up for her to see. A cat lies on its back amongst blooming chrysanthemums and tall grasses, batting a temari ball between its paws. Momoka seems almost startled at the sight of it.

“Oh! Good call, a cat’s perfect!” Noah exclaims. But Momoka still hasn’t said anything, staring in surprise. Ren hands it to her, lets her feel the fabric and look it over. He sees her do what he did before, pressing her thumbs along the embroidery and tracing the cat as though listening for whatever the sukajan has to say.

“You both think so?” she asks. “You think the cat suits me? That’s funny.” And when she finally smiles, Ren feels he can let go of the breath he was holding. The darkness you breathed into him scatters, like insects in the light, for just a moment. “I think you’re right. I think these suit us very well.”

They’re at the register counter when Ren asks her, “Are there any good stories about cats?”

She smiles down at the folded-up sukajan. “No, not really. Nothing much to say about cats.”

There’s a purikura booth just down the road. It’s a tight fit, barely enough room for three people, and they have to squeeze in close. Smiling, cheek to cheek, two fingers up in a “V,” they look at the camera and wait for the countdown to the click of the shutter. Ren puts the pictures he gets in his bag and doesn’t look at them. He’s afraid you’ll be there just over his shoulder.

*

And maybe you were right sometimes. Just now and then, when it came to a few specific things. Maybe you were right about how to hold onto someone, because you are still holding onto him. Haven’t even touched him in a year and a half but he still feels you everywhere, still tiptoes around the house late at night so you don’t wake up, still knows he belongs to you. Even now. The scars are still there. He wakes up so many mornings with his neck sore and stinging, a red ring of claiming staining his flesh. 

So maybe you were right, about that at least. That doesn’t mean he likes it. The knives from Tokyu Hands are still encased in plastic, but he hasn’t mailed them back yet.

*

Dinner is conveyor belt sushi in downtown Shinjuku, but Ren’s still hungry. On his right, a slice of fatty tuna slips out of Noah’s chopsticks and drowns in soy sauce. In the next seat, Momoka rips a curly-edged piece of squid in half with her teeth. A rainbow of plates piles higher and higher beside each of them, and Ren plucks another off of the conveyor as it passes, eyeing the sauce-glazed fish on top. It’s getting dark outside. He unfolds the map the hostel gave him and pretends to be planning for tomorrow, but really, he’s looking at them. The way Noah’s shirt fits his slender, athletic build and Momoka’s lips open around a little clump of rice. 

It’s like a fire, he’s startled to find, it’s like a little, smoldering ember in the pit of his stomach. Every time Noah sways on his stool and brushes against him, it grows a little hotter. The need and the want swirl together into a single, ravenous feeling and he swallows hard at the sight of Momoka gingerly sipping from her water, the way her lips shine when she sets it down.

“How do you guys feel about trying one of those public bath places? Too weird, or okay? I figure we should try everything,” Noah says. He still hasn’t gotten the hang of chopsticks. Ren watches him balance them awkwardly between his fingers. His grip is too far back and he can’t hold onto anything properly, but if he really struggles with it, Momoka will close her hand around his and her palm will blanket the back of his hand in this intimate way that Ren never gets tired of watching. He switched seats with Noah just so they could reach each other easier. It’s important that they bond.

“Not too weird,” Ren says. “We should try everything. Have you ever gone to one, Momo?”

The nickname is sudden, an impulsive decision. Predictably, Momoka blushes and tries to hide behind a large prawn, and Ren feels a surge of—something. You used to tell stories about your hunts and your conquests, about sidling up next to a lonely stranger at The Braying Mule, slinging an arm over their shoulder, speaking in a low, steady tone and watching them trip over themselves to get to know you. Was it like this, he wonders, did it always start like this? 

She runs her finger along the rim of her glass and Ren tracks the movement with his eyes, enraptured. Small, delicate, fragile. They’d snap like twigs. They’d look nice dotted with bloody bites. “At home, I go often,” she says. “But it’s not very popular these days. I don’t think there’s a mixed bath close to here, so we can’t do it together.” 

Noah shrugs. “Eh. Scratch that off the list, then.”

In the empty seat on Ren’s left, you chuckle. “It’s nice that they like each other,” you say. 

Ren nods, because it  _ is  _ good. It’s different, completely different from anything you’ve ever done. You tried to keep someone else once but you never bothered thinking about compatibility. They were too headstrong, too vicious. He remembers the fights, the clawing and biting, a broken leg. You put a stop to it because even you understood that you couldn’t keep him and them. Bad pets get put down. He could never do that because he isn’t you, and they’re not like that anyway, they’d never disappoint him like that, these are people he likes and cares about, and you were a monster and he isn’t. 

“Really?” you sneer.  _ “Really?” _

He tells you to shut up.

“Oh!” Noah gasps. “Karaoke! How have we not done that yet?” 

“I’ve never done it, either,” Momoka admits, curling in on herself even further when Noah lets out an exclamation of disbelief. She plucks a little round orb of salmon roe and Ren hears it burst between her teeth. She’s eaten the most of all of them, picking away at Noah’s leftover rolls that he couldn’t finish. “We could do a bar, or a place with private rooms. What do you think?” 

“Private room,” Ren says, so fast and with such excitement in his voice that they both look at him, startled. “I think that’d be best. Right?” He licks his lips, tastes remnants of soy sauce and eel. “We haven’t done that yet, either, you know. Been alone together, away from other people. Just the three of us. Could be fun.” He traces the grooves in the counter with his fingertips idly, because he’s afraid if he looks them in the eye they’ll see that he’s burning inside.

“You think that’s a good idea?” Noah says, his tone teasing. He’s looking at Momoka, then at Ren, his eyes narrowing. “Something bad might happen, right? If we’re left to our own devices like that.” 

“Doesn’t have to be bad. Could be really, really good.” He glances at Momoka because that’s where he’s expecting some resistance, some timid hesitation. He sees just a flicker of it before she averts her eyes and makes herself small, staring at the floor. Submission. A small thrill shoots through him but so does shame. This is dangerous. This is going to go somewhere it shouldn’t. He didn’t come to Tokyo to hurt anyone. 

“Yes, you did,” you say. He’s starting to think you’re right.

“But, uh. We don’t have to do anything, really. If we don’t want to,” he says. That’s a lie, actually, but he’s heard you do that. Placating, you called it. A sweet little,  _ I’m not gonna hurt you, buddy. Not as long as you do what I say _ that makes them think they have a chance. Momoka looks up meekly to meet his eyes, her blush reaching the tips of her ears. Her gaze is restless, jumping around his face. “Ah,” she says, “well. As long as we go slow, it’s okay, I think.” 

And that’s almost too much for him. That makes it hard to keep it together long enough to pay the bill, find a karaoke place, idle around at the front desk for what feels like a short eternity while they wait for a room to free up, and make that long, anxious walk down a dark hallway. The door’s solid wood, no way to see in or out. Ren’s heart beats so loud he hears and feels it in his head. There’s a pair of maracas and a tambourine on the table. The lights are low and the karaoke song menu is glaringly bright against the back wall. Nobody moves. Nobody says anything. Ren isn’t sure how they don’t hear his pulse, it’s so loud, so fast and panicked. Maybe this was a mistake after all. 

“What are you waiting for?” you ask him excitedly. You never were patient.

Noah clears his throat and all eyes are on him. The silence is tense, way too heavy. It takes him a second longer to actually talk. “So, uh. I wasn’t misreading that earlier, right? Back at the restaurant. When you said, y’know...that….” He trails off, doesn’t finish the thought. Now that they’re here, in this small space, sitting at a little table so cramped that their knees all brush together under it, he’s getting a little skittish, and Ren thinks that’s adorable. He likes that a lot, because it’s easier. He gets to be the one who knows what’s happening. Who leads. Who’s in control. 

“So,” you hiss, “take control,” and that’s the best idea you’ve ever had. 

You’ve done this. You’ve shown him how. He leans over, takes Noah’s chin between his fingers, and tilts his head so they’re looking each other dead in the eye. He watches the muscles in Noah’s throat flinch. The little nervous bob of his Adam’s apple. He’s pale there, his skin smooth, unmarked. Ren is so much hungrier than he was before dinner. “What’d you think I meant?” he says. He glances at Momoka over his shoulder and her fingers are covering her mouth, her eye wide and her blush even darker. 

“I dunno,” Noah says, averting his eyes, and that’s not what Ren wants. Ren wants his full, undivided attention, so he tugs on Noah’s chin. “I-I mean, I think I know, I just, I wanted to make sure so I didn’t do something stupid.”

“Go ahead and do it,” Ren says, and his voice goes even lower now. He knows this. This is familiar. You sounded like this, too. You would grab him, all of your fingers clamping around his forearm like a vice, and you would look at him with foggy, unfocused eyes, and you would drag him to the couch or the kitchen counter or whatever was closer, whatever you felt like. And he hated it, it made his stomach turn and his head start spinning and all of these weak, whimpering sounds would tumble out of him before he could stop it, but  _ this _ .

He likes this. 

He likes when Noah starts to lean in and then gets scared, stopping, looking away. He likes yanking him closer, grazing his lips and the hollow his throat with his fingers, crushing their mouths together, tasting ginger beer and soy sauce, curling his tongue around Noah’s and making him shiver. When he pulls away and Noah tries to follow him, he shoves him back on the couch by the shoulder and—

Is this what you saw? Each and every time? Apprehension and excitement, shaking hands and shyly averted eyes? He gets it. He gets it now. He wraps his hand around Noah’s throat and he squeezes ever so slightly. The body under him shivers, eyes falling shut, a shaky moan coming out. Ren feels electric, more alive than he ever has before. Noah doesn’t fight him. He doesn’t even try. He lays there, splayed open, arms above his head like he wants Ren to pin them in place.  _ He could kill him right here, right now, and it would be so easy. _

“Holy shit,” Noah mutters. “Oh my god. Wow. So you’re a top. Wasn’t expecting that.” 

“I’m—what?” Ren blinks and a haze that had settled over him starts to lift. The shame comes back, thick and curdling. This was a mistake, he thinks. This was stupid, he thinks. Your hand on his shoulder is the only thing that keeps him from pitching forward and throwing up everything he had for dinner all over Noah. “No, I. I mean. I never tried—never got the chance—” 

“I don’t mind,” Noah says quietly. Sweet. Cute. Too trusting. Ren feels dizzy. 

“Sorry. I. Sorry. I didn’t think this through,” he says, a hand resting across his forehead. He’s overheated, covered in sweat. You’re still there, lingering, telling him to get ahold of himself while the mood’s still good and take what he wanted, but is that really what he should do right now? “Look, I. I dunno, maybe we shouldn’t. I’m kind of—the things I like are a little…” He looks down at Noah with his lips parted and his eyes glazed, ready and willing and waiting for him, and all he wants is to tear him apart. To mark his territory, fuck him, taste him, break him down and make him feel what Ren is feeling now, this horrible wildfire in his chest that’s blazing harder and higher than he’s ever felt. He needs him to understand. “I want to hurt you,” he says, choking on the words. 

“Ren,” Momoka says.

He turns around, embarrassed. “S-sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“This isn’t proper for a karaoke room.” 

He nods mutely, his mouth going dry. 

“Instead,” she says, gazing at him through her lashes, “a love hotel would be better, don’t you think?” 

*

You didn’t believe in ghosts.

It only came up a couple times. Once, early on, when he was shivering on the sofa next to you wearing the bloodied constellations of your hunger on his skin. You draped a blanket over him when you both knew he wasn’t cold. The TV was on, playing at a volume too low to hear anything but the occasional scare chord. A horror movie, something recent. Four teenagers playing with an ouija board in a dark house. He hurt too much to turn around so he just squeezed his eyes shut whenever something jumped out of a closet or screamed into the camera. 

You just sat there, beer in your hand. Unflinching. You’d held a knife in that hand earlier, and you were crushing the windpipe of some stray creature you’d lured into the basement that night. It was disgusting. There was blood and cum and vomit all over the floor. The blade went into their stomach over and over, sunk in to the hilt, and you stuck your fingers in the soft, sucking gash to pry it open wider until you could fit your whole cock inside, fucking a hole through their intestines, feeling them squelching hot and tight and wet all around you. You’d made him watch. You’d made him climb on top while their body cooled and all he could think about was the wet slide of those slick, cum-drenched intestines against his stomach.

And when it was over, and you’d had a few drinks, and that stupid movie had been on for half an hour, you said you didn’t believe in ghosts. Who were you even talking to? He still doesn’t know. Good for you, he thought, because this house is probably haunted a thousand times over. Maybe you didn’t believe because it was convenient. You just didn’t want to see all of your indulgences shambling around when you were done with them.

It came up again, much later, in the living room again. Leftover Chinese takeout. An infomercial playing on TV. Something screamed in the basement and he flinched, he remembers, it’d scared him. Nobody was that loud. It was asking for trouble. You said you didn’t believe in ghosts, and you almost sounded wistful. 

The next day, that screaming animal in the basement stabbed you in the throat. 

“Ren,” you said, the word garbled, drowned in a mouthful of blood. Your nails scraped across the concrete floor. “Ren. Don’t...just stand there.” You looked like an insect. Like a writhing, carrion-eating larva that had just gorged itself, wriggling its heavy, clumsy body over the ground, but you were never going to turn into anything. 

It was hard to see you like that, and that’s the truth. No matter what you think happened, that’s all there was to it. It was horrible. You made this wheezing-gargling sound like something waterlogged, something throwing up sludge after it was dragged up out of a bog, and that noise haunted him for months. Your nails scraped his ankle, once, twice, before your fingers could get a grip. He never saw the look in your eyes because he had already closed his. 

You breathed in. Coughed wetly. Made this sharp, barely human sound. Something insectoid. He knew he would have to open his eyes but he didn’t have to  _ yet. _ Count to fifty, he told himself, wait that long, at least. You heaved and sputtered. You clung to him, trembling, through all of it. He hoped you would be somewhere else when he opened his eyes. Maybe upstairs in your armchair. Maybe out in the yard. Somewhere, doing something, like you always were. You were quiet when he reached thirty. You were motionless when he got to forty-five. You hadn’t done anything when he hit fifty. But he was scared. So he started counting back down, slowly. Your fingers were still wrapped around him, even as the blood on your palm dried to his skin and you grew cold and the basement felt small, like the walls were closing in on him. He didn’t want to believe in ghosts. He kept counting.

But when he opened his eyes, you were still there. He’d never been more afraid in his life.

*

Momoka finds a place. 

Noah whispers that it’s strange, right, that she needed to ask for directions or read station maps to find everything from the souvenir shop to Sunshine City, and yet she stands in the illuminated doorway with a shy smile and a beckoning wave. He almost sounds concerned. But Ren isn’t because he’s just along for the ride, a passenger in the backseat of his own body watching things happen at half-speed. He tugs Noah along behind him and waits patiently for Momoka to get them checked in at the unmanned electronic desk. 

It’s a themed room, some kind of traditional bedchamber. The bed is covered in luxurious silken sheets and an enormous pornographic woodblock print hangs on the wall. Momoka slips off her sandals in the entryway and steps inside with eerie familiarity, as though she knows the place, her fingers tapping along the red-lacquered lattice sliding doors sectioning off the bed from the rest of the room. The lights are off and only a flickering paper lantern in the corner shows the angular silhouettes of antique furniture, a cramped dining space, a narrow path past the bed to the bathroom. 

“Do you know about Yoshiwara?” she asks them casually, but Ren hears that her nerves are catching up with her. Her voice trembles ever so slightly and her breath catches with anticipation. “It was the old pleasure district of Tokyo. Brothels were legal there. This room is modeled after such a place.” 

“It’s really fancy,” Noah says. He’s the first to test the bed, flopping down on his back and sighing. “ _ Really _ fancy, you guys. Come feel this.”

Momoka giggles and settles in next to him, but Ren hesitates. He’s still standing with his back against the door. You’re on the other side, he can feel it. You’re standing out in the hall. “This is what you wanted, right?” you’re muttering. “You have them right where you wanted them. You’re alone. Nobody’s around.”

“It was fancy on purpose. To make you forget about the world outside,” Momoka says. She lifts her head from the nest of pillows clustered up against the wall. “Ren? Are you okay?” 

He opens his mouth and no sound comes out. Slowly, he approaches the bed, sees the two of them lying together, Noah on his side and Momoka on her stomach, all eyes on him. 

“They’re yours,” you’re whispering. When did you come inside? “They’re all yours. Just take them. Look at how much they want you.”

“Can we talk?” Ren says. “Just. Just a little bit. Before we do this. You guys should know something.”

He wants to know what this looks like to you. A show of weakness, probably. A childish ritual to chase away all of the dark, frightening things lurking inside of him. A last resort. He crawls into bed, legs folded under him, and he laces their fingers together. Feels their warmth and knows that they’re real. 

_ I’m broken, _ he wants to say,  _ I’m a mess. I came here fractured and I’m going to fall apart any minute now, and I don’t deserve you, either of you. I want to hurt you so badly. I want to make you cry. I want to hold you down and destroy you and fuck you until you’re bleeding. I want to tear you apart. I want to kill you. I want to build a nest out of your bones, your skin, your clothes, all the pieces that remind me of you. I want to taste your hearts while they’re still beating. I want to eat you so you’re with me always.  _

“I...” A lump builds in his throat and he can’t squeeze anything out around it. The silence stretches on for a minute, and then another, and it feels like forever. Noah and Momoka look at one another and then at him and he thinks this is it, they’re going to leave. But they don’t.

Instead, Noah says, “I lie to everyone when I go on trips. I just make things up. It’s not a compulsion or anything, it’s just fun. I like making people think I’m something I’m not.” He squeezes Ren’s hand in a silent apology. “I’m not in college. I don’t have a sister. My ex didn’t steal anything. But I really do like you guys. That part’s true.” 

Momoka takes a deep breath. “I’m not in Tokyo to do research,” she admits, looking down at their hands guiltily. 

“What? That’s all?” Noah scoffs. “Jeez, you should’ve gone first. Now I sound like an even bigger asshole.” 

That squeezes a weak chuckle out of Ren, but it doesn’t make the painful, constricting pressure in his throat go away. He lets go of them both. He pulls back. He stands up. “I need to get some air,” he says hoarsely. 

“Do you want us to come with?” Noah asks. Ren looks back and they’re both watching him from the bed, concern all over their faces. 

“No. No, I’ll be okay. Just need a minute.” He takes a deep breath and bends to get his shoes. This is good. He needs some distance. He needs space to breathe and time to think this over. His head’s already clearing and everything is neater, easier to see. Noah and Momoka’s worried eyes follow him out the door. 

But he doesn’t get far because you’re there. He runs right into you, stumbles, and he can’t do anything when you take him by the shoulders and slam him against the wall in the hallway. He shuts his eyes but he smells you; rust, motor oil, pit stains, rancid death. “What are you doing?” you hiss. “Wasting this perfectly good opportunity?”

“They’re my friends,” he says. It comes out weak, whimpered. Nothing’s changed since that day. He feels just as small and helpless as he did then. He’s at home, in the basement—your basement—his back hits the wall and you’re there, towering over them, face shrouded in shadow, he can see it all clear as daylight in his mind’s eye. “You want them, don’t you?” you say in that low, needling tone. “You know what you have to do.”

“I’m not like you!” He’s choking up, tears burning in the corners of his eyes. 

“They’re going to leave you. Everyone will leave you if you don’t teach them to stay.” There’s a hand around his wrist, squeezing, making him open his shaking fingers so something can fit neatly against his palm. A plastic handle. A comfortable, familiar grip. 

“No, no, no, no, I can’t, I  _ can’t _ —”

“They’re going to  _ leave.” _ You dig your fingers in. You lean in closer, so he can feel your breath on his face and smell the blood that clogged up your throat. “You’re going to be alone for the rest of your life.” 

_ “No,” _ he cries. And then his eyes are open, and he sees you, sees your face, for the first time since that day. His breath catches in his throat. His heart skips a beat. He’s been afraid for a year and a half, constantly, every second that he’s awake has been spent scurrying from one room to another in the small world you left behind, a cage with an open door he’s been too afraid to leave. He’s heard your breathing, your footsteps, seen your shadow, felt your presence everywhere he goes and he has always kept his head down and his eyes closed, has always avoided meeting your eyes because he knows you haven’t changed. He didn’t want to know what they looked like that day. 

But you’re here. Now. In front of him. You wrap your hand around his and squeeze, so the knife handle’s shape is embedded in his skin. You tell him to let go, so he does. His tail unfurls, bunching up at his back beneath his claws. His ears curve out on top of his head like horns. He holds nothing back. Gently, you push him towards the door. He goes without arguing, without hesitation, because you were right all along. He steps back inside with the knife hidden behind him and a smile, your smile, plastered to his face. You’re guiding his steps. You’re keeping his shoulders back, his head held high. 

They won’t leave him. They won’t have the chance.

“I’m back!” you tell him to say, so he does in a bright, singsong voice. “Sorry to make you guys wait. You still wanna have fun, right? It’d be nice if all three of us could—”

There’s a wet, ripping sound, torn straight from his memory; you and your indulgences. The sick smacking of mastication, flesh pulled taut, ripping, shredding. The stench of blood is cloyingly thick and he runs face-first into it, finds himself in a cloud of the heady scent. But that’s not right. He hasn’t done anything yet. Their shoes are still by the door. The bed is covered in discarded clothing, an eyepatch lying neatly atop a folded blouse. The shower is running. 

“Noah? Momoka?” Ren calls, following the lantern light towards the bathroom. The lights are off. Something’s wrong. He nearly loses his footing on the tile floor, something slick wetting his toes, and his hand shoots out to catch the wall. The smell is overpowering. Steam hits his face, the hiss of running water almost masking a low, rumbling noise. Something growls in the dark. 

“Guys?” He has to squint. His eyes start to adjust and the vague shapes fill in with detail; white tile, splashes of red. Noah lies on his side, his back to Ren. Naked. Covered in blood. His shoulder is a raw, ruddy mess of mangled flesh and muscle peeks out where a chunk of him is missing. Momoka is on top of him, a forked tail standing stiff and bristling behind her and a pair of furred ears pressed down on either side of her head. Her eye is wide, wild, the pupil a thin slit. The other is a gaping socket marred by jagged scar tissue.

Slowly, she sits up. Her mouth detaches from Noah’s shoulder with a soft, squelching sound. Blood coats her mouth, her cheeks, her chin. “Ren,” she says. Her voice is hoarse, rough and rusted as though it’s fallen into disuse. “This—I’m—I, I didn’t think—”

“You’re eating him,” Ren says weakly. Is Noah breathing? Is he dead or unconscious? He can’t tell from here. Momoka bows her head, but she doesn’t apologize. “I,” Ren takes a shaky breath, a short step forward. “I was going to eat both of you.” Her eyes flick up from the floor, glinting and predatory. Ren looks down at her and a growl rises from some long-sleeping, primal part of him. He steps closer. “Give him to me.” 

Momoka arches her back, hissing. A trail of fur along her spine bristles with agitation. 

“Give him to me!” Ren demands, his hand shaking around the knife. 

A snarling sound tears from her and she plants one clawed hand on the floor, caging Noah’s body against hers. “Foxes are so selfish,” she hisses. “Come and get him, then.”

For the first time in a year and a half, Ren neither sees nor hears nor feels you. You’re not hidden; you’re just gone. You started this fire in him, set the kindling, threw the match, but it’s raw instinct that fans the flames, turns it from smoldering embers to a raging, hungry inferno. You would hate everything about this trip, every tender moment, every gentle word, every kind stranger.

But you would love what he’s about to do.


	3. 急

He knows this one;

Two shapeshifters meet at a crossroads. A fox and a tanuki, but really, they could be anything or anyone. A tengu and an oni. A badger and river otter. You and him. Him and Momoka. And these two, these shapeshifters, these lifelong liars and cheats, they’re the very best at what they do. They’ve fooled everyone. They’ve worn a thousand faces. What’s left but to deceive another deceiver? So they hold a friendly competition to see which of them can disguise themselves more skillfully.

But there is no friendliness among deceivers. There is always a catch.

The tension snaps like a loaded spring and he pounces.

They tangle together like snakes with their fangs bared, scrambling across the slicked floor in a war for dominance. Ren’s head slams into tile and he lashes out blindly, scrapes something with the knife, rolls his whole body weight into a hard shove with nothing but instinct guiding him. He hasn’t felt this in a long time, this blinding, scorching sensation, every nerve in his body on fire and his heart screaming for blood. Momoka wriggles loose out from under him, and it hurts when her claws rake his face, hurts when blood dribbles into his eyes and everything goes red, but it doesn’t stop him. He grabs her ankle, brings the knife down into her thigh. He didn’t think cats could howl like that. It’s an unholy, rumbling noise.

“You lied to us,” he growls. “You didn’t give a shit about us. This whole time, all you thought about was eating us.”

“What about you?” she hisses. She twists her body, wrenches her leg away and he loses his grip on the knife. It’s gone before he can reach it again, flung into the dark with a metallic clatter, and then her teeth are in his wrist. Ren snarls, writhes in her grasp, and they’re rolling again, tumbling under the cold shower spray that stings on every mark on his skin. Momoka pulls back with a chunk of flesh between her teeth but he only winces. He’s felt worse. “Tell me, _fox,”_ she hisses, like it’s an insult or a curse, “why are we here, if not to be your meal? You’re only angry I was faster. It’s no excuse to steal from me.”

Noah lays where Ren found him still, motionless under the showerhead. Blood runs down his back and creeps in reddened, swirling clouds towards the drain. The sight of it fills Ren with both anger and hunger, the desire to have and the desire to destroy. “He’s _mine!_ You’re both mine! You can’t just take him from me like this!” He flails, kicks out his legs and slams the heel of his palm into her face, anything to fight and survive. He’s oversensitive, hyperaware and overloaded by every sensation, shivering at the water like rain down his back, every fresh laceration and half-moon of bite marks throbbing in agony. He can’t remember the last time he was so alive, so in the moment, living somewhere outside of his fears and miseries.

Another shove, claws sinking into her side, and Momoka topples over with an angry screech. Ren is on top of her in an instant, seizing both clawed hands and slamming them down on either side of her head, his whole body tingling with the rush, the high he gets from seeing her under him. Momoka wilts like a dying flower, trying to curl up and protect her chest, her stomach, all of her vulnerable places, but he keeps her pinned in place, splayed open for him to see. He isn’t thinking when he buries his face in the crook of her neck and bites down as hard as he can.

Her flesh splits, blood spurting onto his tongue. His teeth sink in like they’re meant to fit there. Momoka makes a strangled sound and he feels every muscle in her body straining against him, his hand nearly lifting from her wrists, but he holds out longer. He sucks at the wound until she’s mewling in pain, shivering under him, and then she goes limp. Ren pulls back with a string of bloody saliva connecting his lips to her throat. She’s just lying there, eyes squeezed shut. Some part of him understands that he’s won this fight, but it’s not enough. He licks his lips and the taste of her is too good to stop now.

“Turn over,” he growls.

Momoka flinches. She rolls onto her side, burying her face against the cold, wet tile floor, her tail curled between her legs. Disobedience while feigning submission. White-hot anger flashes inside his head and his lips curl back in a snarl. She whimpers pitifully when he moves her, shoves her onto her stomach and rests his weight on her back. Another jolt of pleasure runs through him, a pleasant tingling at the base of his spine.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he mutters, leaning in and nosing against the nape of her neck. She whines when he scrapes his teeth threateningly across her skin. “I wanted you. Both of you. I would’ve kept you forever.” He’s burning, even with his legs resting in frigid puddles across the floor and a light, ice-like sprinkle across his back. His hair clings to his forehead and the nape of his neck. Their scuffle left his clothes in tatters and he peels off the thin, damp rags left of his shirt, kicking off his jeans.

Momoka begins to squirm again but she goes still when he lets out a warning growl, and he swells with satisfaction. He’s half-hard already, heated by the battle, the scratches across his body, proof that they were here, together. He grips Momoka’s tail by the base and yanks it out of the way, and her whole body goes rigid with a strangled cry.

“You’re not going to say anything to me? Not even beg me to stop?” he asks.

She’s shivering. Ren runs his hand over the goosebumps dotting her arms, scratches lightly at a deep gouge where he must’ve caught her with the knife. She lets out a ragged breath. “You wouldn’t listen, would you?”

“No,” he admits. Newfound viciousness wells up within him and he presses her into the floor with his body and bites the soft, furred tip of her ear. The way she whimpers makes his heart beat faster. He can smell something sharp, sweet, more acidic than sweat; arousal, he realizes, and takes a deep breath with his nose buried in her hair. It’s addictive, almost dizzying. His hips move on their own, grinding against Momoka’s backside and trying to force into her warmth.

“Fox,” she murmurs, turning her head to peer at him over her shoulder. “You smell like you want to mate.” The word stirs something inside of him and he feels hot all over, a tightness gathering in the pit of his stomach. He flinches when her tail brushes one of his thighs, snaking around his leg. Her gaze narrows. “Is that what you want?”

He wrenches her legs apart, dragging his blushing cockhead between her lower lips and groaning at the softness. It isn’t at all how he imagined it. It was supposed to be the three of them, in bed, and he was going to take it slow. He’d hurt them and make them feel good and it would all feel the same in the end. He’d teach them. He’d make them understand. But Momoka arches her back, her head resting on the floor as she raises her hips enticingly, the tips of her tail stroking his side, and it’s not the same, but he can live with it.

“You said I stole from you,” he mutters. “But you stole from me, too. So let’s get even.”

“Even?”

Ren grabs her hips, digs his claws in, and drives himself into her tight heat in one brutal thrust. Momoka hisses and her claws scrape over the tile floor. The sensation is incredible, pleasure shooting up his spine. She’s hot inside, velvet soft and squeezing all around him, and he gives a slow roll of his hips experimentally, relishing in her harsh inhale, the way her legs quiver. Ren noses against one of her ears and nips at it teasingly. “Yeah. Even,” he growls. “You have to take everything I wanted to do to both of you.” He snaps his hips and the sound is obscene, flesh hitting flesh, a slap that echoes off of the bathroom walls.

“That isn’t even,” Momoka whimpers, gasping at another harsh thrust. “I’m—nngh! I-I’m still hungry. How will you fix that?”

“You can eat as much of me as you want.” Ren kicks her legs open further, holds her open with his legs slotted between hers. There’s no conscious thought involved when he climbs over her, mounting her, angling his hips and slamming his cock into her body until he bottoms out with a loud slap. “If you can get on top,” he mutters, and stops holding back.

He was right; Momoka is loud. She cries and shrieks and makes these keening, mewling noises at everything he does. He can’t tell if she feels good or not, but he’s past caring, past knowing anything but how to feel good. His teeth sink into every inch of skin across her shoulders and he stares at his marks with satisfaction, kissing and licking the places he made her bleed with fondness. They’re acting like animals and it feels right, he thinks, it feels so _good._ He knows this, recognizes it, remembers once when this sort of powerful need overcame him and you brought some whining, squirming thing for him to fuck, tied them down and spread them open and rubbed his back soothingly while he...

His hips falter. You. You’re still here. You’re watching all of this. He almost _forgot._ He’s never forgotten, has never not known you were there, and yet—

A hand slams into his chest and he goes down before he can reverse momentum. His head slams against the floor and he sees stars. Momoka slinks on top of him while the room’s still spinning. He sees double, too many eyes. “Distracted, fox?” she hisses. Ren stiffens at the slicing pain of a claw sinking into his chest. She scratches a jagged line down to his navel and leans down, smirking sharply, to lap at the blood dribbling across his trembling flesh, and this is familiar, too. Being terrified, being hurt, being lost in a daze of too many sensations. The prickling pain of something sharp in his skin, trailing across his inner thigh and dangerously close to his waning erection, is a nostalgic danger that makes the emptiness in him ache.

You’re watching. Your eyes are the same as they were that day. And you hate him, you hate him, you hate him but it wasn’t his fault and why were you the victim at the end, why did it have to end like that with nothing he could feel right hanging onto, nothing that meant anything?

“Fox,” Momoka calls. A tongue like sandpaper scrapes the side of his face, licking up tears he didn’t realize were falling. “You don’t taste so sweet anymore.”

Ren’s hands are shaking when they find her shoulders. “He’s right there,” he whispers. Momoka shifts and he clings to her, sinks his claws in, doesn’t let go. “No no no _don’t look at him—”_

Momoka’s lips are soft. Her tongue is rough but she’s careful, almost gentle with him, and his hands wind slowly around her neck. He gasps into her mouth at the tight, wet slide of her easing onto him, sinking down in a single, smooth motion that leaves them both breathless.

“Fox.”

“Call me my name,” Ren says hoarsely. Momoka regards him with something like pity, head tilted and gaze softened. She looked at him like that when he thought she was human and it really looks no different now, and that hurts even more for some reason. He closes his eyes like he always does. “Please,” he begs. “Just once. Pretend you like me, just for a second.”

Momoka nuzzles her face against his neck, purring softly. She rotates her hips in his lap just as he’s going soft and touches the gouges she made in his chest gently, almost reverently, the way they touched the animals on their sukajan and tried to understand themselves. “Ren,” she sighs. He bites down a moan and a sob. She’s moving too slowly and his hands find her hips, squeezing and scratching, urging her to ride him faster. It’s strange, he thinks, it doesn’t make sense. She’s on top but she isn’t hurting him. She follows his lead, tries to match his movements and sink down into his thrusts. He’s almost as loud as she is. Sometimes, he isn’t sure who’s crying out, only that their voices are rising, intertwined, each mewl and whimper blending into the next.

“Ren,” she moans, her body folding. Ren holds her close and feels the end coming, the heat building, everything going white for one razor sharp moment. He buries himself inside of her and his cock throbs, milked empty by the spasms of her body. He doesn’t realize he bit her until he unclenches his jaw and finds it embedded in her neck. She must feel almost as wrecked as he does because she doesn’t move at all, curling up on top of him with her tail lightly slapping his thigh.

The shower is still running. He’s sore and cold all over. All he can hear is his heartbeat, and Momoka’s, and the breath they’re sharing.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But for just a second—and it’s gone when he blinks, when he has time to think about it—he really feels like nobody’s watching.

*

“It’s dangerous to love humans, you know.”

Ren looks up in confusion.

“Ah. Of course, you grew up differently. You seem comfortable with them,” Momoka says. The light from the lantern flickers, spilling orange across her shoulders. He watches her tail vanish as she wipes her hand across it, as though erased from her body. Her ears go even more quickly with a flick of her wrist. Before she puts on any clothes, she slips the eyepatch on to cover the hollowed, scarred space. Suddenly, a human is sitting before him, legs folded beneath her. Before, he was frightened to see people change so quickly, but now he only feels a sense of kinship.

There’s an unspoken distance between them; Noah’s body tucked into the blankets, his breathing shallow. A towel wrapped with ice soaks up blood from his shoulder.

“Have you ever tried?” he asks. He can’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Momoka kneads her hands in the bed sheets absently without breaking eye contact. Ren’s not sure she even knows she’s doing it. “I was hurt,” she admits.

“Oh.”

She tilts her head and her tail flicks back and forth behind her, the gesture almost playful. “You won’t ask?”

“No, it’s—that’s personal. I’m not gonna pry.”

“Not that. If I’ve ever found a human who loves me.”

Ren’s face fills with heat. “Wh—c-can you read my mind or something?”

“No. Cats just have very good hearing.” Her shadow stretches, tall and feline, on the wall behind her. He wonders what his looks like. “I hear what you say, and especially what you don’t.”

“How's that any different from what I said?”

She tilts her head again, the other way, and her tail sways with the movement. “You’re afraid to ask.”

His face feels hot. He bites his lower lip and tries to keep any tears from coming out. He has an impulse to look away in shame, but he doesn’t. You’re there, after all. Waiting in his periphery. “I’ve been hurt, too. I came here to stop hurting, but it didn’t really work. I don’t want to hear you say that it’s hopeless.”

“I haven’t found one because I haven’t looked,” she says. Ren regards her with suspicion but her expression remains unchanged. “It’s not hopeless. But I think love is a worry for another me. Maybe one that has not been born yet. For now, I’m content, because I have myself.”

Ren picks at the blankets with his claws. He’s still himself, his tail curled around him, ears drooping in exhaustion. He’s tired like he was when he came here, too tired to rest, but not everything is the same. “It’s hard,” he mutters, “to be content.”

Momoka nods. You shake your head beside her.

“When,” he hesitates, taking a deep breath, “when will he go away?”

When she turns around, he doesn’t stop her this time. He doesn’t know what kind of expression she has now, what sort of face she makes when her eye travels the short space between the bed and the wall and you’re there, staring back. She’s not smiling or frowning when she looks at him around. Wordlessly, she reaches across Noah and holds out her hand. Ren gently lays his fingers over hers, mindful of his claws. She doesn’t say anything. Very gently, she squeezes.

There’s a weight in his chest and it swells, grows sharp edges and thorns, stings where it hangs in his chest and grows heavier by the second. It’s been there. For a year and a half, it’s been there, and all the numbness around it has finally thawed away. He lets it hurt. He feels that pain radiate through his whole body, lets the sob tear from his throat. He lets himself cry as loud and as long as he wants to for things he has never cried for before. Somewhere in his mourning, a timid seed of relief has begun to sprout.

*

Noah wakes up in the hospital with a few broken bones and a nasty bite in his shoulder slathered in cold antibacterial cream. His eyes find Ren’s so fast it seems almost instinctual, and his smile makes Ren hurt in places he didn’t think he had. “Some night, huh?” he laughs, but he winces, leans back against the pillows a little higher. “Damn, did I get hit by a truck or what?”

Ren shrugs. He rehearsed this over and over in his head on the walk over, practicing the story Momoka gave him—wild dogs, he’s supposed to say, because they waited so long to get him to the hospital that they could’ve conceivably come all the way from the countryside. For some reason, he can’t bring himself to speak. Nervously, he fidgets in his chair and taps his fingers on the armrest.

Noah’s smile dampens. “Momoka couldn’t come?”

Ren shakes his head. This, too, they had an explanation for, since it was Sunday and she really did have a long way to go to get home. But he knows she hasn’t left yet, because she told him she still had business in Tokyo despite overstaying her welcome. Ren hadn’t pushed. They’d traded enough truths already and he wasn’t owed any more.

He owes Noah more than he can ever really give him. They both know it. But like the rabbit in the moon once threw itself into the fire, he simply shakes his head and surrenders to uncertainty, saying, “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Ren says.

“Look, it’s whatever. I deserved it. I lied to you guys about a bunch of stuff. Didn’t even give you my real name.”

“You could’ve _died.”_

“Yeah, but...I didn’t.” Noah grins. “So that’s awesome.”

Somehow, Ren’s still able to laugh. “You really are just like this all the time, huh?”

“A lot of people say I’m kind of stupid, but I mean, it’s good, right? I hurt basically all over, but I woke up alive to feel it. That’s pretty sweet.” He struggles to sit upright and Ren leaps out of his chair, trying to find the button to adjust the bed. Noah gives him an appreciative smile. “Hey,” he says. “Can you do me a favor and tell Momoka something?”

Ren swallows hard. _She’s back home already_ , is all he needs to say. But he can’t. Noah looks at him like he knows.

“I felt pretty bad when I got here,” Noah admits. “That first day we really started talking, I actually wasn’t going to Asakusa. I was headed to this place out in the sticks, Fujikawa-something, because I,” he pauses, looks down. “Well. I mean.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Ren says.

“But I want you guys to know. I changed my mind like halfway there. Got a ticket for the next train to Tokyo and turned right back around. I’m alive because of you.” Noah looks him in the eye and this smile is different from the others. It’s not as bright, a little lopsided, trembling like he’s trying not to cry. Ren reaches for his hand and Noah holds on tight, looking at their connected fingers.

“I’m just returning the favor,” Noah says, shrugging off whatever vulnerability he might be showing. “She told me something last night after you walked out, you know. She said I should tell you if I got the chance.”

“What’d she say?” Ren asks.

The two of them appear in his mind’s eye, sitting together on the love hotel bed; Noah in the pillows with his hands behind his head, Momoka curled up beside him, leaning in to whisper;

“‘We all told one truth.’”

A nurse comes in and opens the blinds, letting in a warm stripe of midday sun. Ren looks out the window at a loud, bustling downtown, taxi cabs and police cars squeezing through congested streets, herds of pedestrians filling the sidewalk. From here, it looks like any other city. Another nurse comes in to interpret for the first, telling Noah his shoulder’s healing nicely. Ren watches from a distance. Hospital rooms, too, are the same everywhere, the same sterile smell and faded, off-white colors, the beep of the heart monitor a solitary, powerful rhythm. He decides he’ll be the one to get the snacks today. If Noah isn’t out by the afternoon, he’ll stay, and they’ll figure out something fun to do.

Somewhere in Tokyo, Momoka must be hunting for a new meal. Ren glances at the skyline and sincerely hopes she finds one. It’s terrible to be hungry.

“Hey, Ren!” Noah calls excitedly. “They say I’m going home today! I’m getting a cast, though, so you’ve gotta sign it.”

The nurse gives them markers in a dozen colors. Ren draws a fox across the inner side of Noah's cast and writes his name in block letters. Noah looks at it like something priceless and maybe they both cry a little, but they aren’t going to tell anybody. And you'd hate this, probably, but nobody asked you anyway. What are you going to do about it? Maybe you’re watching with your hateful eyes from a day long passed, but that’s not his problem.

Later, he’s folding his fifteenth paper crane and it’s just as lopsided as the first fourteen, it’s head crumpled and its wings bent. A line of them, bright bamboo green and peach pink, topple over when Noah moves suddenly and shakes the little table attached to his bed.

They laugh and pick them back up, one at a time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endlessly,  
> the far side of the clouds  
> May part us, yet  
> Shall I carry you  
> Within my heart?  
> -Anonymous


End file.
